1 option
A new paradigm for understanding today's world / Alain Touraine ; translated by Gregory Elliott.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Touraine, Alain.
- Language:
- English
- French
- Subjects (All):
- Social change.
- Social problems.
- Physical Description:
- vi, 226 pages ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Eng. ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, [2007]
- Summary:
- In the first centuries of modernization in the West, the social world was described and thought of in terms of politics: order and disorder, king and country, the people and revolution. In the wake of the industrial revolution, capitalism freed itself from political power and gave birth to another paradigm, one that was both economic and social. We began to speak in terms of class and inequality, wages and strikes, wealth and its redistribution.
- Today, in the age of a global economy and the triumph of the individual, globalization has shattered these old models of society. Each of us, caught up in processes of production and mass culture, strives to escape from them and to make ourselves the subject of our own lives. The new paradigm through which we try to make sense of these new preoccupations is cultural. The great questions of our age bear witness to this: how should we protect the rights of minorities? Should sexuality be placed at the centre of our lives? Are we witnessing a return to religion?
- The old paradigms were oriented towards conquering the world; the new paradigm revolves around us. Just as we are faced with the breakdown of a world once run by men, we are now entering into a 'society of women'. As ever in the writings of Alain Touraine, the concern to give theoretical form to our social practices is nourished by life as it is actually lived, and everything thought through here refers back to the most everyday experiences of the globalized world in which we are currently living. This book will be of great interest to students and academics in sociology, social theory and cultural studies, and to anyone concerned to understand today's world.
- Contents:
- Introduction: A New Paradigm 1
- Part 1 When We Referred to Ourselves in Social Terms
- 1 The Break 9
- 9/11
- Fear
- A world in decline
- Where is meaning to be found?
- 2 Globalization 19
- From the post-war states to the globalization of the economy
- An extreme capitalism
- The rupturing of societies
- Alter-globalism
- From society to war
- A globalized world
- 3 Europe: A State without a Nation 33
- Decline of the national state?
- Is European unity possible?
- European Union and United States of America
- The European state
- European powerlessness
- The absence of European consciousness
- 4 The End of Societies 44
- The social representation of society
- The European mode of modernization
- Society and modernity
- The crisis of representation
- The three deaths of European society
- Irruption of democracy
- The return of the political
- Farewell to society
- The war above us
- When system and actors separate off
- The rupturing of the social bond
- Are we witnessing the end of social movements?
- 5 Revisiting the Self 71
- What is modernity?
- The victory of modernity
- The end of social thought
- Emancipatory individualism
- Forms of social determinism
- From focusing on the world to focusing on the self
- The awakening of the subject
- Part 2 Now that We Refer to Ourselves in Cultural Terms
- 6 The Subject 101
- The subject and identity
- The sources of the subject
- Defence of sociology
- The individual subject
- Rights
- Are we all subjects?
- The negation of the subject
- A related note
- The subject, social movements and the unconscious
- Proximity
- The subject and religion
- The subject and the school
- The experience of being a subject
- The anti-subject
- Between gods and societies
- 7 Cultural Rights 144
- Political rights and cultural rights
- Minorities, multiculturalism, communitarianism
- Redistribution and recognition
- The new social movements
- Modernizations
- Entry into the post-social world
- Sexual rights
- The limits of cultural mixing
- About the 'veil'
- Communities and communitarianisms
- Liberals and communitarians
- Secularism
- Intercultural communication
- Return to new ideas
- 8 A Society of Women 184
- An altered situation
- Equality and difference
- Sexuality and gender
- The woman-subject
- The role of men
- Post-feminism
- Argument: By Way of Conclusion 208.
- Notes:
- Translation of Un nouveau paradigme pour comprendre le monde d'aujourd'hui (Paris : A. Fayard, c2005)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [211]-213) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0745636721
- 9780745636726
- 0745636713
- 9780745636719
- OCLC:
- 171550890
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.